2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Yeah now I remember it fully. It was in 2024 that they changed the standard from 5s to 10s. The choice to give leniency in Saudi was the decision of that steward group, not guidance for all future incidents. Given how far away Max was going into the first corner in Madrid, and then proceeding to pass Kimi afterwards, expecting anything but a standard 10s would be a reach IMO. Either way, with a time penalty in the pit stops Verstappen was never winning that race.

The race was lost at the start. All of the RBPT cars suffered sluggish getaways. They were in the bottom half of the grid on the 0-50km/h metric. Nothing specific to any of the drivers unless all 4 of them colluded to have bad starts... Mercedes and Ferrari cars were in the top half.

This is why I said there are just too many issues to get a win this year. You can maybe win a race with only 1 of the problems that RBR has. You cannot do it with worse deployment than Mercedes in Q3, bad grid starts, degrading car performance in the race, dodgy rear wings (that looks to be in the past though...), and not even having a top 2 car...Overperform in qualy? Immediately surrender the positions at the start. Make an opportunistic pass? Rear axle says no.

[Wouter]

Much funnier the Max vs 100 thing than Madring GP.

.
Indeed it was. It was 2 hours pure fun! Everybody who watched it was having a better time than watching F1.

[AR3-GP]

@Laptime_f1 has computed the total time on straight for best laps in GP qualifying for R4 to R13. Mercedes spent the least amount of time on the straights, and this was the average time difference (shown as percentage deficit) to Mercedes for the rest of the teams:



Top 3 are Mercedes powered (no surprise...). Next are the RBPT teams. Williams is an outlier because their additional weight reduces the straight-line acceleration. Simply put, Mercedes obviously have the best PU. They have the most power going to the wheels, and therefore they and their customers spend the least amount of time on the straights.

[Valeo]

The second issue may be even more fundamental. Red Bull refers to it internally as car degradation, not ordinary tyre wear but a loss of mechanical and aerodynamic balance over the course of a session or race. The RB22 performs at its best with a full fuel tank.

As fuel weight decreases, the car becomes relatively weaker rather than stronger, exactly where teams normally expect improvement. Rear-end instability increases and the tyres overheat quickly.

It is the opposite of how a race car should behave, and it is a problem Red Bull has been wrestling with for years.

In conclusion, there remains plenty of work to secure regular victories, but the progress made since the season opener leaves Verstappen and Red Bull firmly on the right trajectory.

https://racingnews365.com/inside-red-bu ... t=14431757

[gearboxtrouble]

That would indicate some sort of rear end design limitation. This would also explain why they need to run so stiff to control this degradation.